4 Afghan Schools Attacked

Kabul, Afghanistan — Vandals attacked four elementary schools for girls outside Kabul last week, firing rockets at two and burning blackboards and floor mats at two others, U.N. officials reported.

No one was hurt in the attacks, which occurred on Thursday night in a small area around Maidan Shar, a town about 50 miles south of Kabul.

It was the third time that small-scale arson and bomb attacks have been carried out against Afghan girls' schools during the past six weeks. In mid-September a small explosive detonated under a chair in a school in Kandahar, in the south, causing minor injuries to a teacher. Late last month vandals set on fire two tents used by a girls' school in Sar-i-Pul, in northern Afghanistan.

The governor of Wardak province, where the attacks occurred on Thursday, began an inquiry on Tuesday. U.N. officials said that three of the four schools had been able to continue holding classes and that Afghan and international officials were determined to keep them open.

"It is completely unacceptable," said Edward Carwardine, a spokesman for the U.N. Children's Fund in Afghanistan. "Every child in Afghanistan has a right to an education, whether they are a girl or a boy."

No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but suspicions centered on backers of the country's former Taliban rulers. Under his severe interpretation of Islam, Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, barred girls and women from most forms of education.

In the attacks, vandals fired a rocket at a girls' school in one village that struck the roof and set the building on fire, Carwardine said. Residents saw the flames and quickly put them out. Classes are still being held, he said.

A second rocket fired at a school nearby ripped a hole in a classroom wall, but classes there are also continuing.

In a third village, vandals entered a mosque being used as a girls' school, dragged blackboards and mats into the courtyard and set them on fire. The vandals left a hand grenade outside the mosque, apparently as a warning.

The fourth attack was against a roadside restaurant whose owner donated the building for use as the first girls' school in the area. Vandals set floor mats on fire and also poured gasoline on the building's roof and ignited it. Nearby guards saw the flames and quickly put them out.

Carwardine said classes had not resumed there. "The owner of the restaurant hasn't decided what he is going to do," he said. "Some girls were crying Saturday morning when they heard."